Phantom Kiss
by spare
Summary: Now’s your chance, you find yourself thinking, gazing down at him still and asleep beneath you. You could kiss him if you dared, and no one would ever find out.' Shounenai, Doumeki x Watanuki


Disclaimer: xxxHolic is CLAMP property.

Preliminary Notes: Mild spoilers. This short fic is set right after the first story of Volume 6 (right after Yuuko, Watanuki, Doumeki, and Mokona drank the moon-viewing sake, to be exact). Watanuki passed out at the close of this story and I wondered how he got home. This I my own fluffy take on what could have happened.

Warnings: Shounen-ai, Doumeki x Watanuki

**Phantom Kiss**

By Spare

You wonder, not for the first time in this long, long evening, just what you're doing here.

It's a couple of hours past midnight and there's nothing much else to do other than go home and sleep. Make sure to wake up early. The day yet to come is a weekend, after all; there's bound to be a dozen or more visitors in the shrine during morning services alone.

And yet, you agreed—as usual without any sort of complaint—when Yuuko-san requested for you to carry him home. So here you are a full half-hour later, standing just outside the door of his apartment, him laying prone and unconscious in your arms, and you thinking how agreeing to this might not have been a very good idea.

Wordlessly, you prop him down against the nearest wall and search his uniform for the apartment key. It's tucked inside his left inner pocket, just as Yuuko-san said it would be. You open the door, switch on the lights, slip off your shoes. You pick him up again and carry him inside, past the main room that obviously served as a kitchenette at one end and a sitting room at the other, and into his bedroom. Everything, you note, is neat and tidy as one would expect.

You lay him down—still sound asleep—on his bed. You take off his glasses and the dark outer jacket of his uniform, placing said articles on the foot stool beside his closet, and bend forward slightly to loosen his shirt.

You undo the first two buttons, exposing his pale, slender neck, but—again, against your better judgment—you stay where you are, looming over his drunk, sleeping form.

You muse—and you're amused at—how different yet not-so-different he looks while he's asleep. His face, the sake-induced blush tinting his cheeks discernible even in the dim light, appears relaxed. At peace. There's a slight smile gracing his lips, the kind of sweet, delicate smile you know you shouldn't allow yourself to stare at for too long, let alone wonder if those upturned lips are as soft as they seemed, promised to be.

Now's your chance, you find yourself thinking, gazing down at him still and asleep beneath you. Your face hovers inches from his. You could kiss him if you dared, and no one would ever find out.

But you don't.

Instead you brush your fingers gently, almost reverently, across his forehead, steadily sweeping down so that your hand ends up cupping the side of his left cheek. You trace the outline of his lips with the pad of your thumb.

Reluctantly, you draw away a full minute later, raising yourself up to a proper standing position, but you don't step back.

Not yet, you softly whisper, as much to the night as to yourself, not yet—but soon. Someday soon.

You press the thumb with which you'd caressed his warm moist lips to your own. Your arms tingle with the memory of his body against yours.

For now, these would have to be enough.

You leave his home as quietly as you arrived. The taste of sake lingers in your mouth.

If you'd kissed him tonight, that's what you might have tasted (1).

-End-

– This last line was shamelessly lifted from Volume 2 of the yaoi manga Yellow by Makoto Tateno, from the bonus story "Kiss & Gin & Cigarette". Kudos to Tateno-sensei for the line.

– I've got a Doumeki x Watanuki fan art that doesn't really accompany this piece of fiction, but is fluffy just the same. It could be found at httpCOLONSLASHSLASHmarmochiDOTdeviantartDOTcom. Replace the capitalized letters with their corresponding symbols and you got the url.


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